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BI prevents 4 women from leaving for Dubai

July 18, 2021 Itchie G. Cabayan 361 views

FOUR women intending to work as household service workers in Dubai under the pretense of going to work in Europe were stopped from leaving by Bureau of Immigration (BI) officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

The identities of the four female overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are being withheld based on rules and they were endorsed to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking for further investigation and filing of charges against their recruiters.

The BI’s Travel Control and Enforcement Unit (TCEU) said that the passengers attempted to board an Emirates flight to Dubai at the NAIA Terminal 3 last July 12, when they were intercepted.

According to BI spokesperson Dan Sandoval, the women initially showed valid work permits and visas to Albania but later admitted that they were actually hired to work as household service workers in Dubai. They also admitted that they were not going to proceed to the said European country.

It was learned that a new modus operandi being employed by human traffickers and illegal recruiters is obtaining work permits and job contracts for their victims to work in another country such as Albania or Maldives, when in fact, Dubai is their actual work destination.

The BI said this is a type of third country recruitment, wherein victims are given documents for one country but end up being deployed in another and that in many instances, victims are made to accept conditions that are otherwise not acceptable just to be deployed for work.

The TCEU reported that all four passengers presented documents showing they were hired to work either as housekeepers or warehouse staffers in Albania.

Sandoval said that when pressed on their actual travel itinerary, the said women eventually confessed that they had been recruited to work as household service workers in Dubai and that they would be handed their job contracts and work visas upon arriving at the emirate.

Their employers reportedly paid as much as P200,000 for the processing of their visas.

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